In typical practice, when a user of a cell phone experiences service problems or problems with operation of the cell phone, the user will call or visit a customer service center operated by the user's wireless service provider, and a customer service representative will attempt to troubleshoot the problem.
With an in-person visit to a customer service center, the customer service representative technician can readily evaluate the cell phone and its communication service at the center, by physically operating the cell phone, applying various test equipment to test the phone, and testing the phone's wireless communication functionality. Unfortunately, however, it may be inconvenient for a user to bring the cell phone into a customer service center. Furthermore, the cell phone problems experienced by the user may relate to environmental conditions (such as air interface or wireless network infrastructure conditions) where the user normally operates the cell phone, and those environmental conditions may not be present at the customer service center. Thus, testing the cell phone and troubleshooting the user's problems at the customer service center may prove to be fruitless or wasteful.
For the user's convenience, and to provide more relevant troubleshooting, it would therefore be better to have a user call into the customer service center when the user is experiencing problems, and have the customer service center try to troubleshoot the problems at that time. In practice, when the user calls in, the customer service technician may walk through various troubleshooting tasks with the user, such as to ask the user to press certain buttons on the cell phone and to report to the technician what the cell phone does and how things work. If the technician thereby learns of more substantial problems regarding the phone, the technician can ask the user to bring the cell phone into a customer service center for work. Further, if the technician thereby learns of problems with the wireless network, the technician can write a trouble ticket to initiate network repairs.
Still unfortunately, however, the process of having a user walk through troubleshooting efforts with a customer service technician can be burdensome and confusing for the user. Additionally or as a result, the technician may be unable to gain sufficient information about the operation of the cell phone and its environment to be able to take appropriate remedial action.
Consequently, an improvement is desired.